Episode 1 Brave New World

America has been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples,

not because this continent was a new-found land,

but because all those who came here believed they could create

upon this continent a new life.

A life that should be new in freedom.

With these words,

Franklin D Roosevelt summed up the reason millions of people

have been drawn to this new world, from the 1500s to the present day.

Among them, men and women from the north of Ireland.

This is the story of people from Ulster who came here before

the United States was even formed and found themselves

at the very heart of the American experience.

In every walk of life, at every great juncture in this

nation's history, they have made an extraordinary contribution, helping

to shape its culture, its economy, its democracy and its values.

And in doing so, they and their children became Americans.

In the summer of 1718, up to ten small ships from the North of

Ireland docked here at Boston Harbor.

Their passengers were almost exclusively Presbyterians

from the Bann and Foyle Valleys and they had come here to begin

a new life in the colonies.

They weren't the first people to come here from Ireland,

and their numbers did not compare to those of the famine years,

but they mark the beginning of large-scale migration

that would see up to 200,000 Ulster families arrive in America

over the next half-century.

The majority were Ulster-Scots Presbyterians,

small tenant farmers for whom a bad harvest or a fall in the price

of linen could mean the difference between subsistence and destitution.

The Presbyterians also suffered religious discrimination in Ireland,

so often, members of a congregation emigrated together

because America held out not only the promise of cheap

and plentiful land, but religious freedom.

Those Ulster Presbyterians who stepped ashore in 1718

might have expected a warm welcome from their Calvinist cousins,

but in fact, puritan Boston was not at all happy with what they saw

as an influx of new immigrants competing for their land and jobs.

So, within a few months, the Ulster families were on the move again.

This time to the very fringes of settled society,

as they searched for a place to live.

I'm heading 140 miles north of Boston to find out

about one group of 1718 immigrants that settled on the banks

of the Kennebec River in Maine.

I can only imagine what they must have been feeling,

those families, after such an incredibly daunting journey

and now to find themselves on the Kennebec River,

looking into this wilderness and wondering, is this our new home?

One family who made their home here were the McFaddens from Garvagh.

Now, nearly 300 years later, one of their descendants is watching

family legend become historical fact as the site of the log cabin

built by Andrew McFadden in 1718 is excavated by archaeologists

investigating the first Ulster settlements in this part of Maine.

What do you know about the McFaddens of the 18th century and how

they made it to this very location?

They came across on the ship, McCallum.

They arrived here on roughly the 8th of September, 1718 and were

burnt out by the Abenaki Indians in August of 1722.

My great-grandfather had been doing our genealogy and discovered

this piece of property was where our family had settled and in the

first test hole that we did, we found one of the burnt timbers.

Fate works in strange ways.

-So, this is the main event?

-This is it.

-A bit of a jigsaw?

-It is.

You get the little individual pieces but what's the big picture?

What have you now established with some degree of confidence

about what this might have looked like?

Well, again, we know that the initial living quarters

consisted of a 14ft-square cellar hole.

They came here in September which back in 1700s, 1718, was

pretty brutal winters and I'm sure they were advised to seek shelter.

-Underground?

-Well, possibly.

-Were there many other people living in this area?

-As far as we know, no.

There were two other families, of which we haven't discovered

the names yet but they did come by canoe, or dugout as they refer

to it, basically with the clothes on their backs.

What's been the most interesting find you've discovered

so far in the dig?

The most interesting thing we have found is the timber framing.

The preservation of this site is unreal.

It's like nothing I've ever seen.

Usually we are working with soil stains like we were working

up there but with the preservation in the hall, we can actually

see structures and how they were put together, so it's pretty exciting.

Have you found some windowpanes, anything like that?

We found so much glass, everybody got sick of it.

We know there was a window right in here at the corner of the building.

It sort of makes sense, doesn't it?

-They had an incredible view over there.

-A safety issue, too.

And a safety issue. A panoramic view for security, that would make sense.

The McFaddens had good reason to fear for their security.

In 1722, they came under attack from Native Americans,

the Abenaki Indians.

There is reason to believe that they were forewarned of the Indian

attacks by being able to see the attacks going on north of here.

It was quite evident that they basically just got out with

their lives.

One of the first things we found was this pipe.

It set me back for a couple of minutes because all I could think

was, my tenth great-grandfather had used this and probably had

set it down and then a few hours later when the Indians raided,

or whatever, it just remained there for 300 years, almost 300 years now.

But it really has kind of changed my life,

has given me a deeper sense of connection to my heritage

and my family and I'm now on this road of rediscovery,

I guess you could say.

To find out more about those early Ulster immigrants and how

they had been encouraged to settle in Maine,

then part of the colony of Massachusetts, I have come to meet

John and Val Mann, whose interest in their own Irish ancestors

led them to establish the Maine Ulster-Scots Project.

Come into my office and take a look at what we're saving for records.

During the 18th century, primarily,

there were over 30 different communities Maine that were

settled with Scotch-Irish or Ulster-Scots

during that 18th century period.

Many of them don't have any written records, or they have just

oral history and they're trying to find out more and more about

their families so they contact us and we keep a file for each family.

Here, for example, is a file for the Dunning family.

In there will be whatever information they had when

they contacted me plus whatever information we've been able

to find out and share with them.

Also, most importantly to me, is the stories,

the oral history that's been handed down, has a place to rest

and be relevant to future generations.

This map is a pretty good example of what was going on in the time period

because it shows the river which was the highway of the time, but it also

shows the land that the proprietors from Massachusetts was claiming.

You had one set of proprietors up here in the North,

a different set in the South.

Their land claims overlapped each other,

so the title for the land was in dispute.

Meanwhile, you not only have land title dispute,

you have two countries disputing.

You have England claiming this land, you have France claiming that land.

You gave Massachusetts and England hoping to get this land away

from France to protect Massachusetts. And then you

have the Native Americans who, this is their traditional homeland.

The river has been their homeland for centuries and centuries.

All these competing interests taking place and you have the

Scots-Irish being introduced right in the centre of that area.

-The eye of a storm.

-The eye of the storm.

When we think of the Ulster-Scots in America,

we tend to think of Davy Crockett, the Appalachian Trail,

those American presidents with Ulster-Scots roots.

We don't tend to think of the state of Maine, it would have to be said.

Ulster-Scots were invited to come to New England early on by the

Puritans in Massachusetts because they were afraid the French

were going to advance into Massachusetts with the Indians,

and they needed a buffer up here to protect them.

The territory within 100 miles of Boston was pretty much all

wilderness at that point because the settlements that were there

earlier had collapsed under the pressure from the Indian and

French alliance, so how do we repopulate that area?

We don't want to bring in any Catholics because they might

ally themselves with the French and Indians.

We want to bring in Protestants and we want to bring in people

with a reputation for taking care of themselves because Massachusetts

was in no position to take care of them when they got here.

And we need people that would defend it at all costs.

Val, what's your family's connection with the North of Ireland?

I'm eighth generation from William Maybury

and he came from Ballymoney, Northern Ireland.

He was married to Bathsheba Dennis and they came over around 1730.

She gave birth on the boat on the way over

and they named their daughter, Seafair.

William Maybury was a blacksmith in Northern Ireland and

he brought his tools and his trade with them and set up a blacksmith's

shop on a stump in the middle of the woods in Windham, Maine.

And his first customers were the Indians.

There are much easier places to begin a new life than here.

That's very true and a Maine winter is a Maine winter and the

ground here is rocky and hard, especially near the coast and

the coast was the only place that was available when they arrived.

There were stories handed down that if it wasn't for the clam flats,

being able to dig shellfish on the shore,

that there were many winters that they wouldn't have survived at all.

So, the big picture,

where do you see the influence of the Ulster-Scots in this region?

The culture in Maine seems to be much different than the rest

of New England in the sense that there is

no real identification of class structure.

We don't believe in class structure up here.

Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time,

and you don't tell me what to throw on my dung pile

and I won't tell you what to throw on your dung pile.

For years, they tried to figure out why Maine culture was

so much different than Massachusetts culture, and the local historians

have pretty much tracked it back to the influence of the first

Presbyterian Scots-Irish that settled on the coast of Maine

and the other cultures as they arrived,

adapting to that primary culture, if you will.

-Would people here know what an Ulster-Scot is?

-They do now!

THEY LAUGH

They've been educated. Our programme has really reached out.

We go to schools,

we go to historical societies and we tell the story of the

Scotch-Irish immigration to Maine and enlighten people on the terms

of Ulster and Ulster-Scots and the language that goes with it.

Those stories documented by John and Val have been passed down through

many generations of Maine families, stories of conflict and struggle,

and they reveal the grit and tenacity that their ancestors from

the North of Ireland needed if they were to have any future here at all.

Throughout the 18th century, many more Ulster-Scots,

or Scotch-Irish, as they're better known in America,

were arriving in the colony of Pennsylvania.

AUCTIONEER CHANTS

You've got to be very careful that you don't place

a bid here by accident.

This is a mud sale.

It's a first for me and it's called a mud sale simply because at

this time of the year, the ground can get pretty churned up,

but they are very popular here in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania

as a way of raising money for the local Fire Department.

Lancaster County is also the home of the oldest and largest

Amish community in the United States.

The Amish first came here in the 1700s to escape religious

persecution in Europe and they came to Pennsylvania for the same reason

that so many Ulster-Scots came here.

Not only was there abundant good land and low taxes,

but also, uniquely among the American colonies,

Pennsylvania guaranteed its citizens religious freedom.

The colony had been established in 1682 by an English Quaker

called William Penn.

He described it as his holy experiment, a place where

people of different religions and races could co-exist on equal terms.

To oversee his colony and take care of his business interests

while he was in England, William Penn turned to

a young protege and a fellow Quaker called James Logan.

Logan met Penn in Bristol where he was working as a linen merchant

but he had been born and brought up in Lurgan in County Armagh

where his father was a schoolmaster.

As Penn's land agent and secretary of the province,

James Logan wielded a huge amount of power in Pennsylvania

and he was to become instrumental in the settlement of people from Ulster

in the colony, and in particular, here in Lancaster County.

James Logan was a Quaker, principally,

and he came to seek his fortune as many did.

By the time he was in his 30s or 40s,

he had a lot of skin in the game, too.

He owned a lot of land.

Not as much as Penn did, but if Penn's land was endangered

by warfare with the Indians and people taking over land, so was his.

The Quakers here in Pennsylvania had a very serious dilemma,

didn't they? Because when you build a settlement,

you typically also have to form a militia to defend that settlement,

but they're pacifists.

How did James Logan resolve that dilemma for them?

James Logan decided to invite the Scotch-Irish to settle

and to make their homes in the state of Pennsylvania.

He knew they were tough, he knew they could farm,

he knew they could get the job done and he also knew that

if there were Indian raids on their settlements,

they would fight to the death to protect them.

James Logan wrote,

"I thought it might be prudent to plant a settlement of such men

"as those who formerly had so bravely defended Londonderry

"and Enniskillen as a frontier in case of any disturbance."

-Was his plan a success?

-James Logan's plan was a huge success.

In a period of 50 years,

there were 95,000 Scotch-Irish in the state of Pennsylvania.

So many that Logan himself feared that the entire province

of Ulster would be emptied out and there would be no-one left.

They would all be in Pennsylvania, following his dream.

How is James Logan remembered today?

James Logan is remembered today as a great scholar, a statesman,

a great defender of William Penn and as a Quaker.

But I really think that his real legacy was introducing

a group of people that made the backbone of this country,

people that were not afraid to fight for what they had and people

that loved their religion and their country but wanted to forge

and make a new country for themselves.

Many of those first Ulster settlers in Pennsylvania made their home

on land set aside for them by James Logan and they named it

after the county of their birth.

When settlers first arrived in the United States,

one of the first things they did was to build a church.

And churches for them were not just houses of worship,

they were community hubs, they meant everything to them.

This is Donegal Presbyterian Church. The clue is in the name.

A congregation has worshipped here since the first settlers from

the north of Ireland arrived in this part of America in the 1720s.

# Holy, holy, holy... #

Once they had built their church and homesteads, the Donegal settlers

turned their attention to how their new society should be run.

Members of this congregation and the four others that made up the

Presbytery of Donegal became assemblymen and colonial senators.

They joined the local militia and served as County sheriffs.

Within a generation,

they had significant political and economic power in Pennsylvania

and would become the standard bearers for the colonial movement

for independence from Great Britain.

The Donegal church was built in the middle of this beautiful oak grove,

and it was here, in 1777,

that members of the congregation gathered and joined hands

around an ancient tree and pledged, in their words,

"Eternal hostility to a corrupt King and Parliament

"and unswerving loyalty to the colonies."

No wonder a British Army officer would later describe

all Presbyterian Churches as sedition shops.

In the 1770s, Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies.

It was a hotbed of political and philosophical debate,

the cradle of revolutionary ideas,

and it was to this city that some of the greatest minds of that age came,

to forge a constitutional democracy that would transform America and ultimately change the world.

The road to American independence began when the British crown

imposed a series of taxes on the colonies in order to recoup money

it had spent on the French-Indian War.

Each new tax on sugar, tea, glass and paper

fuelled resentment in America, so that for the first time

the colonies came together to act as one in protest.

The Quaker Assembly of Pennsylvania was loath to get involved,

but the Ulster-Scots had no such qualms.

They had no love for the British who they blamed for their having

to leave Ireland in the first place,

and leading the campaign for independence in Philadelphia

was a former teacher from Upperlands and County Londonderry,

Charles Thomson.

You don't see these very often. A 2 bill.

It's still legal tender in the United States.

On the front, Thomas Jefferson,

the third President of the United States, but turn over

to the back and you see a reproduction

of John Trumbull's famous painting The Declaration Of Independence

and right there at the centre of the action, Charles Thomson,

secretary of the Continental Congress,

the man who would design the Great Seal of the United States.

When Charles Thomson came to America a penniless orphan,

his prospects were poor.

At the age of ten, he was working for a blacksmith,

but a place at a school run by Francis Alison,

an Ulster Presbyterian minister and philosopher,

turned his fortunes around.

The blacksmith's apprentice became a classical scholar,

a businessman and a political radical whose sharp intelligence

and reputation for honesty and independence led to his appointment

as Secretary of America's Continental Congress.

This is Independence Hall, the birthplace of the United States.

It was here that the Continental Congress met to debate

and declare independence, and in doing so,

they set out the principles

upon which this new nation would be founded.

The Continental Congress was a group of representatives

from each of the colonies.

They came together in Philadelphia in 1774

to address grievances

by the Crown, and Parliament.

And the first Continental Congress

was a very short-term occupation for all of them.

They got together, they wrote a letter to the King,

the King ignored them.

That led to the second Continental Congress,

the second group of representatives from the colonies

who came together in Philadelphia, and ultimately that led to

the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution.

The first printed version of the Declaration of Independence,

known as the Dunlap Broadside, was issued on the fourth of July 1776.

It was a 28-point attack on George III's treatment of the colonies

and the philosophical basis for a new civil democracy.

It was an act of treason.

There are only two names on the John Dunlap printed version

of the Declaration Of Independence.

That is the President of Congress, John Hancock.

The document is attested to by Charles Thomson,

the Secretary of Congress.

If the revolution had failed, or had not gotten off to a heavy start,

two names, those two men would have been hung.

Charles Thomson's name on that declaration gave the American people

confidence in its authenticity.

If something was promoted,

it was as good as if Charles Thomson's name was put to it.

So he had a sense of character

and was known as a person of very truthful character.

Part of his legacy is his role in designing the Great Seal of America.

The very next resolution after the resolution to be independent

from the Crown was a resolution to have an heraldic seal

for these new and independent and United States.

And that was put out to a committee and you can guess what happened -

absolutely nothing.

Went out to a second committee and nothing happened.

Went out to a third committee and nothing happened.

Charles Thomson accomplished the task in two weeks.

And the easiest place to see it is on the back of the 1 bill.

And here actually is the only place that you can see

both the obverse and the reverse of the seal.

We are familiar with the eagle, with the shield on its chest,

holding an olive branch and the bundle of arrows, but the back side

or reverse of the seal shows a pyramid, an unfinished pyramid.

And that, in a way, is one of the more important parts of the seal,

because in heraldry, that unfinished pyramid is an unfinished process.

And the founders of the...

the great founders, the revolutionaries, didn't believe

that they ever finished anything at the end of the American Revolution.

They only thought that they started something.

This place just oozes history.

In its day, this was the most important room in all of America.

This is where the Declaration of Independence was designed,

it's where the new Constitution of the United States was adopted,

and sitting in that chair, just over there,

right next to the President's chair, was Charles Thomson.

The young boy from Upperlands in County Londonderry was now

one of the founding fathers of the United States.

Few immigrant stories have made it onto the pages of history

like that of Charles Thomson.

But Ulster immigrants came to America in such large numbers,

so early in the nation's history,

that they had a huge influence in securing its frontiers,

moulding its culture and shaping its democracy.